In the 3rd of this series of short blog posts, I'd like to examine another antipattern in use of kanban systems in consulting and change initiatives. This is the last of the antipatterns for now but it won't be the last of this series of short blog posts.

In this antipattern, a consultant designs a defined process, either uniquely for their client, or out-of-context as a defined off-the-shelf solution that they document and publish in some form. This defined process includes the use of a virtual kanban system and so they claim this is "Kanban" rather than give the process a specific name...

In the second in this series of short blog posts, I'd like to take a look at another common antipattern in Kanban adoption - the use of a kanban board and the claim that "we are doing Kanban now" as a smokescreen for no change at all...

I have been storing up a series of short blog posts which are too long for a tweet but typically shorter than a full blog post. I've decided to publish them all separately so that they have separate URLs and can be indexed and referenced separately. This is the first of this series...

"After we started Kanban quality suffered because we stopped testing!"

This is just one of the many bizarre claims that I've heard over the last couple of years that fall into a general category of an organization discontuining some vital practice or knowedge creating activity allegedly because they adopted Kanban. I found these claims so bizarre that I could not fathom how they would come see things this way. Back in November I figured it out!...

We have some really quite special training lined up for the first half of 2014. In some cases, this training is new and unique and may never be offered in these cities or regions again. In other cases, it is still really special because of who is teaching it and how long has passed since we last offered a Kanban class in that location...

Recently, Klaus Leopold of Leanability in Vienna has introduced a "flight levels" metaphor to help explain how Kanban training maps to organizational maturity and the focus of improvement for service delivery. This model helps explain how Lean Kanban University training is positioned and why Lean Kanban University training delivers better value than alternative training that offers a shallow understanding of Kanban...

Recent changes in Kanban training curriculum has enabled Lean Kanban University to publish the first training roadmap for those learning Kanban for use in creative knowledge worker industries. The new roadmap is illustrated by this simple kanban board...

Since forming Lean Kanban University in 2011 and creating a group of accredited trainers, David J. Anderson & Associates has backed away from offering open 2-day Kanban classes with the exception of new market and niche offerings such as our Kanban for IT Operations classes, with Dragos Dumitriu as the trainer. This is about to change in North America as we move to a direct selling and market development model for many regions of the country.

After 5 years of teaching 2-day Kanban classes and almost 4 years since the book, Kanban - Successful Evolutionary Change for Your Technology Business, which became the foundation for our training curriculum, and almost 300 classes later, we are making changes to the official Lean Kanban University training curriculum for 2-day classes. The existing Practitioner Level curriculum is being split into 2 x 2-day classes. These will be known as the Foundation Level curriculum and the Advanced Practitioner Level curriculum...

In 2013, my Kanban Coaching Professional (KCP) Masterclass has proven popular and influential. During my recent tur of Europe, 4 individuals who attended the class in the first half of the year each approached me with their own stories that amounted to the class had been life changing professionally and personally. I've been very happy with the curriculum this past year. It's been very settled and consistent...

For those who saw Andy Carmichael's "Shortest Possible Definition of Kanban" talk at Lean Kanban United Kingdom, you will know that he talked about Kanban as having two approaches to scaling: scaling by not scaling through a service-oriented approachl; and scaling through a scale free assumption. This blog post addresses how that latter assumption is true. Our clarity on this on trult emerged during our Lean Kanban Inc leadership retreat in Phoenix recently where Mike Burrows and I agreed the symmetry of how Kanban scales. It turns out to be remarkably simple. Simplicity is a good thing. We are all for maintaining simplicity and leveraging its powerful nature with respect to complex domain problems.

You scale Kanban by limiting formerly infinite buffers between services.